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SUPPORT YR LOCAL RECORD STORE
Apr. 17th, 2011 08:15 pmApril 16 was National Record Store Day in the US.
bedsitter23 has a nice post on why it matters. What little I can add is as follows:
As a more or less permanent resident of Hong Kong, there’s not much I miss about living in the US. But one of things I do miss – to a point – is indie record stores.
That’s not to say we don’t have them in Hong Kong. But there are very few, and they’re up against three major chains (HMV, Hong Kong Records and CD Warehouse) and a slew of small AV stores that specialize mostly in mainstream Cantopop, K-Pop, J-Pop and whatever Western pop is currently dominating the top of the Top 40 or Adult Contemporary formats (mostly A/C).
Also, the ones here tend be pretty specialized – hip-hop, jazz, Taiwanese indie, etc. They also tend to come and go. The only ones I know of that are still in operation are White Noise Records (which specializes in Japanese underground but carries lots of other indie music, and also runs its own music label, not to be confused with THIS music label) and Zoo Records (which is where you want to go for all yr Scandivanian/Icelandic alt.rock needs). And neither of them has been in HK longer than me.
They’re pretty good, and I should patronize them more than I do, especially as HMV seems less and less likely to carry music I want to get. But I don’t, for a couple of reasons.
One is location. White Noise and Zoo are in parts of Hong Kong I don’t go to on a regular basis, which curtails my ability to go too often. (To be fair, even if I lived in the US, how often I got to the local indie record strore would depend on how close I lived to that part of town and how much traffic I’d have to combat to get there.) Luckily that's changed slightly in the sense that my office is now closer to White Noise than it was, but that doesn't mean I always have time to swing by after work.
The real reason, though, is that – like a lot of people – I’ve been seduced by the ease of buying new music online. And at my age, it does get difficult to justify spending two hours perusing record racks on the off-chance of finding something great when I could accomplish the same thing on Amazon.com in about 20 minutes (though that doesn't seem to prevent me from spending a few hours at Grimey's in Nashville or Rasputin Music in Campbell, CA whenever I'm in the area).
Not that I blame Amazon or the Internet in general for the decline of the indie record business. Wal-mart and commercial radio are as much to blame as anyone else. The fact that you’ll only ever find cool indie record stores in either huge cities or college towns says a lot. Most people really will just settle for low-hanging fruit when it comes to entertainment.
But I do think there’s a place for both Amazon and brick-and-mortar record stores. Both are good at what they do, just in different ways. Record stores appeal to the inner music snob/college radio music director in … well, those of us who are music snobs and college radio music directors, at least. Record stores force you to dig, which makes any good discovery amazing and hard-won, and it builds a more intimate community, because you know the staff and the other customers are there in part because they love music as much as you do. Some of my greatest memories from my misspent youth derive from spending hours in record stores looking for some cool music with friends, swapping recommendations, and getting excited over new discoveries, and it's something I'd hate to see fade away.
Amazon does the same thing via social networking, but on a more massive scale (and, for the most part, on a more impersonal level). And while it might be easier to find stuff (compared to searching record bins for hours), it also exposes you to a much larger volume and wider variety of new and forgotten music that deserves to be heard that you might never otherwise experience.
That said, the main downside of Amazon – for me – is exorbitant international shipping prices. Nuff said.
Anyway, I hereby resolve to do a little more business at my local indie shop. Just as soon as I get back from Vietnam, which is where I’m headed tomorrow.
No music no life,
This is dF
bedsitter23 has a nice post on why it matters. What little I can add is as follows:
As a more or less permanent resident of Hong Kong, there’s not much I miss about living in the US. But one of things I do miss – to a point – is indie record stores.
That’s not to say we don’t have them in Hong Kong. But there are very few, and they’re up against three major chains (HMV, Hong Kong Records and CD Warehouse) and a slew of small AV stores that specialize mostly in mainstream Cantopop, K-Pop, J-Pop and whatever Western pop is currently dominating the top of the Top 40 or Adult Contemporary formats (mostly A/C).
Also, the ones here tend be pretty specialized – hip-hop, jazz, Taiwanese indie, etc. They also tend to come and go. The only ones I know of that are still in operation are White Noise Records (which specializes in Japanese underground but carries lots of other indie music, and also runs its own music label, not to be confused with THIS music label) and Zoo Records (which is where you want to go for all yr Scandivanian/Icelandic alt.rock needs). And neither of them has been in HK longer than me.
They’re pretty good, and I should patronize them more than I do, especially as HMV seems less and less likely to carry music I want to get. But I don’t, for a couple of reasons.
One is location. White Noise and Zoo are in parts of Hong Kong I don’t go to on a regular basis, which curtails my ability to go too often. (To be fair, even if I lived in the US, how often I got to the local indie record strore would depend on how close I lived to that part of town and how much traffic I’d have to combat to get there.) Luckily that's changed slightly in the sense that my office is now closer to White Noise than it was, but that doesn't mean I always have time to swing by after work.
The real reason, though, is that – like a lot of people – I’ve been seduced by the ease of buying new music online. And at my age, it does get difficult to justify spending two hours perusing record racks on the off-chance of finding something great when I could accomplish the same thing on Amazon.com in about 20 minutes (though that doesn't seem to prevent me from spending a few hours at Grimey's in Nashville or Rasputin Music in Campbell, CA whenever I'm in the area).
Not that I blame Amazon or the Internet in general for the decline of the indie record business. Wal-mart and commercial radio are as much to blame as anyone else. The fact that you’ll only ever find cool indie record stores in either huge cities or college towns says a lot. Most people really will just settle for low-hanging fruit when it comes to entertainment.
But I do think there’s a place for both Amazon and brick-and-mortar record stores. Both are good at what they do, just in different ways. Record stores appeal to the inner music snob/college radio music director in … well, those of us who are music snobs and college radio music directors, at least. Record stores force you to dig, which makes any good discovery amazing and hard-won, and it builds a more intimate community, because you know the staff and the other customers are there in part because they love music as much as you do. Some of my greatest memories from my misspent youth derive from spending hours in record stores looking for some cool music with friends, swapping recommendations, and getting excited over new discoveries, and it's something I'd hate to see fade away.
Amazon does the same thing via social networking, but on a more massive scale (and, for the most part, on a more impersonal level). And while it might be easier to find stuff (compared to searching record bins for hours), it also exposes you to a much larger volume and wider variety of new and forgotten music that deserves to be heard that you might never otherwise experience.
That said, the main downside of Amazon – for me – is exorbitant international shipping prices. Nuff said.
Anyway, I hereby resolve to do a little more business at my local indie shop. Just as soon as I get back from Vietnam, which is where I’m headed tomorrow.
No music no life,
This is dF
